Chipotle May Have Given Up on Its Burger Dreams

Mexican food chain Chipotle has had a rocky road over the past year thanks to… you all know what I’m talking about. (Wink, wink. Vomit, vomit.) Turns out the company’s forays into trademarking the name of a burger brand haven’t been much more successful.

Back on March 11, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc applied to trademark the restaurant name “Better Burger.” At the time, Chris Arnold, a company spokesman told Bloomberg, “It’s a growth seed idea we are exploring…. We have two non-Chipotle growth seeds open now -- ShopHouse and Pizzeria Locale—and have noted before that the Chipotle model could be applied to a wide variety of foods.” I’m not sure if that is a business tip or a public health warning. Ha! I kid, Chipotle, because I used to love.

Regardless, that growth seed appears to have been caught up in a nasty drought, because according to Eater, the company abandoned trademark requests for both “Better Burger” and “Betterburger” officially as of May 24. When contacted by the site, this time Arnold appeared to blow the whole thing off, stating that the company “often file[s] trademarks we end up opting not to use. Use of that trademark was challenged, we weren't wedded to it, and we have simply opted not to use that trademark.”

As Eater points out, though the idea of trademarking something as presumptuous as “Better Burger” was, in fact, met with much disdain, Chipotle also did not respond to the site when asked if the company had abandoned the idea of opening a burger “growth seed” altogether.

As far as we know, no other burger-related trademarks are currently pending for Chipotle.

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